After graduating from the University of Chicago Law School, Professor Kaye completed a judicial clerkship with Judge A. Wallace Tashima on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He then served as an associate appellate counsel for the Criminal Appeals Bureau of The Legal Aid Society of New York, where he represented defendants convicted of crimes ranging from pick-pocketing to murder, and where he served as an alternate vice-president for the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, a union affiliated with the UAW. He was also a consulting attorney for the Capital Defender’s Office of New York.

Professor Kaye’s current research explores how we come to see some people as “criminals” and how we justify our treatment of such people. He is especially interested in how we think about criminal responsibility, the features a person must have to be responsible for a crime and whether people actually have those features. He is also interested in the criminal excuses, our reasons for excusing and whether those reasons have threatening implications for our current punishment practices. More broadly, his research looks at the ethical significance of social, cultural and environmental causes of criminal behavior for responsibility, excuse and punishment, and at the political aspects of our answers to these questions.